Spoiled by Smart’s LTE on my iPhone 5

January 30, 2013

Yesterday on Twitter, I was greeted with news of an iOS upgrade that enables the dormant LTE capability of iPhone 5’s. I quickly updated my iOS 6.0 to 6.1 (107MB) and after a few minutes, there it is, LTE support on my iPhone 5.

Smart iPhone 5 subscribers should automatically have access to over 500 establishments with LTE coverage in the metro as long as they’re under an Unli Data Plan (999 to 3000). There’s no additional payment required and LTE is free and unlimited until April 30, 2013.

Unfortunately, those iPhone 5 users who subscribe to Smart’s unli surfing (All-In Plan like me) is not included in this first wave of LTE rollout. Anyway long story short, I went to Smart and they fixed it for me, I can now access LTE on my iPhone 5.

When I arrived at the office parking lot earlier, I was surprised to see the “LTE” on my phone instead of “3G”. I quickly fired up Speedtest to check just how fast LTE is now that more and more people have access to it.

Voila.

Not bad right considering max speed for current LTE allowed by carriers is 42mbps?

I stayed in the car for a while to check how fast the download speed for LTE is. I whipped out my Android phone, connect to my iPhone 5’s hotspot, and ran a torrent app to download a bunch of songs totaling to 370MB purely for testing purposes only. Hehehe. Check it out:

It’s fasttttt!!! Download was done in less than 10 minutes and I saw speeds push to about 1.2mbps for a spell. Groovy! I’m now spoiled.

I love the internet speed of my iPhone 5 while still on Smart’s 3G but I’m loving it more now with Smart’s LTE. How I wish they’ll expand their coverage soon so I can also get it in our home.

accdg to abe of yugatech plan 1500 has a free lte subs (til apr 30) of 1.5gb capped per month tapos pag nagexceed mag rerdirect na sa webpage that would allow you to purchase an extra bandwidth. (plan 2500 has a 2.5gb capped per month). no use for an lte signal if the data is limited wala pang 4hours ang 1.5gb sa akin

I’m subscribed to the 30-day unlimited browsing of the iP5 all-in plan but I was told by Smart that there is no way for me to access LTE at the moment. I’m surprised they were able to make it work for you! There goes their inconsistencies again. Tsk. Very disappointing.

Hi Calvin, you seem to know well the LTE program. I have a question: I recently replaced my micro sim to nano sim (but I failed to mention for a nano-LTE sim) last week from Smart for me to use my IP5. I’m all-in-plans with current trinet400 subscription almost a month now. Smart has this LTE 50 send to 7577 to avail of a 1 day LTE plan. When I try to register, this message appears “Concurrent registration is not allowed. RC:1422″. I showed this to smart and they do not know my problem. They made a report and I am still waiting for them to fix it. Anyway, i have upgraded the IP5 to version 6.1.4 and enabled Cellular data and LTE. However, is still get only the 3G icon and not LTE while trying IP5 in SM annex in spite of rebooting my phone and disabling and enabling airplane mode. I would appreciate if you have any idea on my problem. Thanks in advance!